Fever

Just when our friend, a consul who writes poetry, comes home once again on Christmas to treat us to a round of drinks (and when lucky, cigars from his diplomatic pouch), I fight deep-down chills sitting with him and our other writer friends in the group Bathalad at the outside tables of the restaurant in the heat of noon.

I merely stare at all the food before me and help pass the bottles of ice-cold beer. I am not taking chances having just taken my antibiotics. It hurts even to swallow your own spit and you just can’t help drooling.

Tis the season for parties and binges, after all, but since last week I had to subject myself to a forced diet of congee, soup, fruits, and other soft food. It’s the worst time to have tonsillitis.

So when my fellow teachers were practicing their moves to the tune of Michael Buble’s “Fever” for their performance during our college party, I stayed home and literally chilled out with  a real fever.

Thanks to it though, I was spared from having to attend another meeting and the embarrassment of having to dance an oldie’s song before our students. I’d rather sing than dance. But with swollen tonsils, you can’t even sing. And, for me, it’s not a party without a karaoke.

Thus I check myself every morning. Opening my mouth before the mirror, I see the red swollen stalactite blocking the entrance to the dark caverns that lead into my bowels. It looks innocent hanging there like a fetus but it’s been the source of all hell I’ve been going through these past few days.

I tried to douse it with antibacterial mouthwash that tastes  like bad medicine. At night, my throat feels like it’s being rubbed with sandpaper or a steel brush. My father suggests gargling with warm water and salt in the morning to ease it up. My mother says adding peroxide to a glass of water is better.

I tried all these palliatives in my desperation. I drank all the teas I have, including those unknown infusions in Chinese language. They all made me want to puke as I rinse my mouth.

In their predictable tongue-in-cheek advice, my friends told me that a shot of alcohol is probably the best mouthwash to exterminate all the “kill-joy” bacteria that’s been spoiling my Christmas.

It was very tempting indeed to try that.  I can imagine whisking rum or brandy first in my teeth, gargling it, holding it up in the throat for long, before gulping it down without a chaser.

Nothing could be smoother. I guess the alcohol will rinse even my bowels, chase all the bacteria through the maze that is my intestines and bust them, like they’re monsters of a computer game.

It’s wishful thinking, of course. As I said, you can’t take chances when you’re taking all sorts of meds at the same time. It’s all just daydreaming when you’re fuzzy with fever. Or is it just Christmas? After all, isn’t Christmas also a season for wishful thinking?

My diplomat friend suspects that I must have gotten tonsillitis after the opening ceremonies of our group’s exhibit at the Bluewater Gallery, which had Miss Universe 2011 Runner Up Shamcey Supsup as guest-of-honor.

“You must have swallowed too much of your own saliva during the opening,” he said in Cebuano. “In that case, I was lucky I was not able to make it to your show. Or else, I would have gotten tonsillitis, too.”

I almost choked trying to suppress a laugh when he said that and was about to say, “Let’s drink to that”. But then I remembered I’m only sipping from a water bottle.